


i don't believe that anybody feels the way i do about you now

by neville



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Cathartic Crying, Everybody Lives, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fix-It, Holding Hands, Hugs, IT Chapter Two Spoilers, Kissing, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Movie: IT Chapter Two (2019), Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, everything is going to be fine for them all, the canon isn't real anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 07:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: When Richie kisses Eddie, it feels like coming home.





	i don't believe that anybody feels the way i do about you now

When Richie kisses Eddie, it feels like coming home. Not to Derry – God, no, not like this place full of nightmares and regurgitated fears passed through oblivious generations; and not to Los Angeles, either, because Los Angeles is like drowning and Richie’s not really that great at treading water. It feels like coming home to a home that actually  _ feels _ like one, one that isn’t lined with traps and disasters; a home that holds its arms open to Richie to comfort him. He doesn’t know that feeling. He’s never felt it before. 

God, he has  _ missed  _ the Barrens. It sounds stupid – so many bad things happened here, but the water is clear and diving from the cliff edge still feels like freedom soaring through his veins. The water blurs his glasses, and in hindsight this is honestly the kind of mission that called for contact lenses but  _ how was he supposed to know when he couldn’t remember _ , but – he just lets the thoughts slide away like water off a duck’s back. Maybe his back, actually. He could be mad about a thousand things, preoccupied with a hundred other, but he feels free for the first time in a long time. As if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. 

More than one weight, really, because Eddie is still grinning a little dazedly at him while he tells Richie off for touching his bandages because  _ do you even know how many germs you’re probably carrying right now, Richie? oh my God you’re probably even carrying evil space clown germs. ew ew ew _ . 

He realises with a little jolt that he can actually hear the sound of someone crying, and he turns; through the smudge of his vision, he can make out Stanley, his hands covering his eyes. Richie is too tall and the Barrens too shallow now for him to be able to swim over, so he wades and, instead of making the joke that feels primed on the tip of his tongue, he puts an arm around his friend as the other Losers crush in. Stan doesn’t need to say why he’s crying: this huge chapter of their lives had ended, and the adrenaline coursing through his veins has probably finally stopped, and Richie has noticed that the faint scarring on the side of his face is gone, and he can feel the thought in Stan’s mind that this might be it again. They might go their separate ways and forget each other again, and there will be no Mike and no catalyst to remember. 

Richie just isn’t crying because he doesn’t think that’s going to happen this time. 

Stan cries himself out, and they hug until he stops; it feels like they’ve never been apart in that moment, like the catharsis in the sewers twenty-seven years ago, and Richie is pretty sure he’s going to remember this all just out of fucking stubbornness, if nothing else. Fuck It. Fuck Derry. These are his  _ friends _ , and he loves them. 

Stan drops his glasses, cute little things that they are, at some point in the hug; and so for a while they dive, and search, and Eddie tells them how disgusting all the water is, and it feels like they’re fourteen again and the world around them doesn’t matter anymore as the morning sun shines like a good omen. Richie thinks that he could stay here forever like this, but there’s only so long they can stay in the water before their fingers prune up and the feeling of their clothes sticking to their skin becomes more gross than interesting as a sensation. 

They walk through their history as they walk back to town. Eddie holds Richie’s hand.

When they pause to look in a shop window, Richie swears that he sees them as they were: young, nervous, but unburdened by the world. Fourteen-year-olds, teenagers,  _ friends _ standing with their bicycles, their whole lives folding out in front of them. He misses it and yet he doesn’t at all, because there is a whole world outside of Derry that he knows now, one where peoples’ smiles aren’t troubled and people look out for each other like seven kids did in Derry. A world where sewers don’t make him think of little George Denbrough, and anyone can hold hands with anyone and he doesn’t have to check over his shoulder for Henry Bowers and his asshole gang. 

“I could kill for some pancakes right now,” Richie says. 

“I think we just did,” Beverly says, and Richie laughs, and for the first time in twenty-seven years, he thinks it might be real. 

**Author's Note:**

> yes, the title is from wonderwall, bcus it makes me think of reddie and im a loser too
> 
> this is my new canon. happy times only


End file.
